passive rôle with which woman has been endowed by Nature, has given her an instinctive inclination to voluntary subordination to man; he will notice that exaggeration of customary gallantry is very distasteful to women, and that a deviation from it in the direction of masterful behavior, though loudly reprehended, is often accepted with secret satisfaction.[1] Under the veneer of polite society the instinct of feminine servitude is everywhere discernible.
Thus it is easy to regard masochism in general as a pathological growth of specific feminine mental elements,—as an abnormal intensification of certain features of the psycho-sexual character of woman,—and to seek its primary origin in that sex (v. infra, p. 145). It may, however, be held to be established that, in woman, an inclination to subordination to man (which may be regarded as an acquired, purposeful arrangement, a phenomenon of adaptation to social requirements) is to a certain extent a normal manifestation.
The reason that, under such circumstances, the “poetry” of the symbolic act of subjection is not reached, lies partly in the fact that man has not the vanity of that weakling who would use blows to display his power (as the love-serving knights did with the ladies of the Middle Ages), but prefers to demonstrate his real advantages. The barbarian has his wife plow for him, and the civilized lover speculates about her dowry; she willingly endures both.
Cases of pathological increase of this instinct of subjection, in the sense of feminine masochism, are probably frequent enough, but custom represses their manifestation. Many young women like nothing better than to kneel before their husbands or lovers. Among all Slavs of the lower classes it is said that the wives feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. A Hungarian officer informs me that peasant women of the Somogy’er Comitates do not think they are loved by their husbands until they have received the first box on the ear as a sign of love.
- ↑ Comp. Lady Milford’s words in Schiller’s “Kabale und Liebe”: “We women can only choose ruling and serving; but the highest pleasure power affords is but a miserable substitute, if the greater joy of being the slaves of a man we love is denied us!”
